Language English Citizenship Canadian | Education B.A. Name Miriam Mandel | |
Born Miriam Minovitch
June 24, 1930
Rockglen, Saskatchewan ( 1930-06-24 ) Died February 13, 1982(1982-02-13) (aged 51)
Edmonton, Alberta Alma mater University of Saskatchewan Notable awards Governor General's Award | ||
Miriam Mandel (June 24, 1930 – February 13, 1982) was a Canadian poet who won Canada's Governor General's Award.
Life
Miriam Mandel was born in Rockglen, Saskatchewan. She gained her B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1950. In 1949 she married Eli Mandel, and after her graduation the couple moved to Toronto where he worked on a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. After he received his doctorate in 1957, they moved to Edmonton, where he taught at the University of Alberta until 1967.
Miriam and Eli Mandel had two children, Evie and Charles. In 1967 the couple divorced and Eli Mandel remarried.
Shortly after their marriage broke up, Miriam Mandel began writing poetry. She won the Governor General's Award in 1973 for her first collection, Lions At Her Face.
Miriam Mandel was a long-time sufferer from depression. Patrick Lane, who was inspired by her to write his 1983 poem "And of the Measure of Winter We Are Sure", later said: "I remembered her from a few years before, a dark, winter night, three in the morning, the two of us out night-walking, separate in our fidelities, through the snow in Edmonton, thirty below, a wind, no one else outside, and passing her, our eyes meeting briefly, a nod, and then passing on, the look on her face not one of despair, but of such a loneliness ... that's why I wrote the poem, remembering Miriam, remembering the hell of an Edmonton winter."
Miriam Mandel died in Edmonton by suicide.
Novelist Sheila Watson edited Miriam Mandel's Collected Poems in 1984. The Miriam Mandel fonds is at the University of Calgary.